Development

Summary

We cannot create jobs, improve lives, build communities or live as human beings without affecting our environment. But as we do so, we can and must minimize impacts, safeguard wildlife habitats and environmental values, and conserve energy and other resources. In short, we must be good stewards of the earth, while meeting the needs of American families and helping less fortunate families and nations achieve their dreams.

All wealth and human progress come from holes in the ground or water: trees and food crops that sprout from the earth, fish pulled from lakes and oceans, and of course energy, metals and other raw materials extracted via mines and wells. Responsibly developing these essential resources brings progress, greater prosperity, better living standards, improved health and longevity, and greater environmental protection.

Humans are consumers and polluters. However, we are also creators, innovators, protectors and stewards. By unleashing responsible free enterprise and our ultimate resource (our creative minds), and by ensuring access to affordable energy, raw materials and modern technologies, we can create jobs, generate new government revenues, make our world better, and improve the lives and fortunes of our fellow human beings in America and poor countries – while also protecting wildlife, habitats and other natural treasures.

Recent Articles

It essentially asserts that indigenous, traditional farmers must be shielded from market forces and modern technologies, so that they can continue using ancient, primitive, “culturally appropriate” methods.

When Robert Brace set out to convert pastureland to cropland on his farm in Erie County, little did he know that this simple, age-old farming practice would lead to decades of litigation that has cost him over a million dollars in fines and legal fees.

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen warns that a pending Supreme Court case could leave property owners at the mercy of federal bureaucrats who would have absolute authority to order them to renovate their property to welcome endangered species — at their own expense, even if the species was not native to the property.

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen weighs in on the attempt by the International Agency for Research on Cancer to shut down sales and use of glyphosate despite numerous studies showing that the world’s most commonly used herbicide does not cause cancer. Indeed, Driessen notes, even the process by which the IARC made its determination is fatally flawed.

In an article published in The Hill, CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen reports that the 3-2 vote by the Nebraska Public Service Commission to approve a new route through the state for the long-delayed Keystone Pipeline may or may not signal completion of the pipeline is near. Read the excerpt here, and the full article in The Hill.

When you think about food at a bowling alley, you might think of pizza and fries, not freshly grown lettuce and herbs. But according to Wired.com, a group called Gotham Greens has transformed the roof of an abandoned bowling alley in Brooklyn into a thriving, 15,000 square-foot greenhouse.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in organic production and encourages natural compost. But it does not test for un-composted feces. At least 140 people across eight states have now fallen ill after consuming hepatitis-A-infected certified-organic frozen berries and pomegranate seeds; 61 were still in hospitals in mid-July.

Genetically modified foods are feared by some, but are these fears this justified? Dr. Patrick Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, says no, and here explains why. . . .

Organic farmers in many developing countries – such as Turkey, the apparent origin of this outbreak – still use raw human sewage to fertilize crops! In many people’s opinion, that practice qualifies as “organic” – whereas using safe modern fertilizers and insecticides does not! Even worse, feces contamination cannot be washed off. It’s embedded in the plant.

CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen exposes the shame of the city leaders in St. Louis, Missouri, who have sought to deflect from the city’s poor reputation for violent crime, high school graduation rates, and overall quality of life by declaring the city MUST transform its power base from 1.5% wind and solar today to 100% wind and solar within the next 18 years. The staggering cost of such a transformation, assuming it can even be done, will be borne by the very people who suffer from high crime, low-performance education, and a sense of hopelessness in the face of arrogant posturing.

Throwing the First Amendment down the toilet, 17 state attorneys general (Democrats) have conspired to conduct an Inquisition against climate realists in order to protect the $1.5 trillion climate crisis industry from being exposed as a total fraud on the world’s population — one that is responsible for energy poverty in Africa that takes countless lives, a growing energy poverty in Europe that is killing tens of thousands, and so many more dire consequences. Having lost the battle to attack the credibility of dissenting scientists, the plan now is just to lock them up or fine them and disallow any public exposition of their research. This plan is not going to work, promises CFACT’s Paul Driessen and coauthor Ron Arnold.

While serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton created a nonprofit to fund so-called clean cookstoves that are being marketed as the preferred UN solution for Africans and others without access to electricity (rather than, for example, providing electricity to them)(. Turns out the Clinton Foundation has an interest in this project, and perhaps the deeper goal is acquiring carbon credits for sale to the highest bidder once Hillary becomes President and imposes a carbon tax.

If the climate crowd truly cared about women’s issues, they would focus on the link between poverty and affordable energy instead of wasting time, money, and resources on policies based on junk science.

The Economist helped push Britain into the “greenest” carbon policies in the known world. Now, even though the global temperatures haven’t risen for more than 15 years they have created their very own energy crisis.

Morano appeared on Canda’s Sun TV to discuss why winter cold is killing many times more Britons than heat. He also addresses the stunning admission that a widely publicized study claiming unprecedented warming in the past 100 years was not “statistically robust”–another way of admitting that their conclusions are scientifically baseless.

Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. However, we do face imminent manmade climate disasters. Global warming is the greatest moral issue of our time. We must do all we can to prevent looming climate catastrophes.

The movie’s main characters are shrunk to five inches tall, part of an effort to reduce the size of people, reduce their environmental footprint, and save the planet. It’s a fun fantasy, but Downsizing repeats tired fears of overpopulation that have wrongly plagued us for decades.

“De-develop the United States” and “halt the growth of the Ameri­can population.” Though Obama science advisor John Holdren would like to cover them up, here are his own words in their full context. Remember when Obama’s EPA rolls out its new power plant regulations Monday.

Two new books, Ten Billion, by Stephen Emmot, and Population: Ten Billion, by Dan Dorley, claim too many people will bring on disaster. They claim humanity will be doomed by the combination of overpopulation, climate change and species loss…. Oddly, this claim has new proponents just as the world’s birth rate has reached an all time low. Births per woman in the poor countries have fallen from 6.2 at the end of World War II to about 2.6 today. The First World is already well below replacement, with birth rates still falling. The UN projections indicate only 6.2 billion people on the planet in 2100!

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen sings an ode to the benefits of federalism and other gifts from the founders in an article inspired by a jazz combo. He reports that the 2016 election was swung in “flyover country” out of a growing frustration with an ever-expanding federal government that had largely discarded the concept of federalism and was dictating too many aspects of our lives.

The children of a Korean War veteran and his wife are hoping to realize the dream of their late parents and build a home in the Florida Keys, thereby undoing a government “taking” of the family’s property.

CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen laments the long, arduous battle to open the Keystone XL pipeline — an action that would eliminate the need for 1,225 railroad tanker cars per day (450,000 per year) or 3,500 semi-trailer tanker trucks daily (1,275,000 annually) that currently transport oil to refineries, saving lives and costs and creating jobs in rural America. Driessen also recounts the many ways that fossil fuels enrich humanity — from feed stocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and other products to powering the manufacturing centers that create computers, smart phones, healthcare technologies, vehicles, and batteries.

Former Reagan Administration official Scot Faulkner lauds President Trump’s and Secretary of State Tillerson’s plans to overhaul the U.S. State Department, which he calls not only one of the most bloated bureaucracies but also one of the least effective — largely because of the internationalist — almost anti-American — attitude that prevails among senior officials. USAID alone has wasted over a trillion dollars on enriching dictators and useless projects that have not produced lasting results. It is way past time to clean house.

Some 500 families were relocated 80 years ago when the federal government used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create Shenandoah National Park. Today, a private company is seeking to use eminent domain (despite having an alternate route) to destroy farmland and displace or negatively impact about 2,700 families. There is a better way.

CFACT’s Marc Morano was at our Light Brigade counter protest to Sierra Club & 350.org’s climate rally on February 17, where the Green protestors were opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. As Morano points out in this video, however, America must get its oil from somewhere–the only question is do we want to get oil from friendly, democratic neighbors like Canada, or from dictatorships and conflict-torn countries?

This week Naderev M. Sano of the Phillipines delegation made a tear-filled speech to COP 18 in Doha, Qatar. In contrast to the delegates wrangling for national advantage, the shameless rent-seeking of the carbon profiteers and the left-wing agendas of the radical NGOs, Mr. Sano projected a refreshing sincerity. Sadly, he is sincerely wrong.

CFACT’s Marc Morano, editor of the Climate Depot news and information service, appeared on the Canadian TV program, “The Source with Ezra Levant,” on February 1 to discuss how rich foreigners spend huge sums of money to oppose cheap energy. The Rockefellers, Levant notes, spend $7 million a year just in Canada to fund legal challenges to development.

CFACT advisor Larry Bell reports, “If there’s anything that climate crisis theology clerics hate more than fossil fuels, it’s got to be any glad tidings about CO2.” New research shows that the switch to fossil fuels preserved more forests to exchange CO2 for oxygen and also returning plant fertilizer to grow more food in the bargain. Thus, any attempt to REDUCE CO2 is counterproductive, given that CO2 boosts water use efficiency.

Friday was not a good day for the Obama EPA. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the stay on the Administration’s land-grabbing water rule beyond the states that appealed, to the entire nation. The pushback against regulatory overreach is on!

Twenty-nine states have filed lawsuits against the EPA for redefining the “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS. Should local streams, irrigation ponds, roadside ditches, and even “connective” dry lands be placed under the authority of the Clean Water Act?